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Saying goodbye to Hawthorne Heights’ Casey Calvert

When Casey Calvert, guitarist for Hawthorne Heights, passed away in November 2007, the majority of the media failed to report the incident accurately or capture the kind of person Casey was. The following narrative is my attempt to do so.

Calvert at Warped Tour 2007

The popular rock group’s bus was parked outside of the Washington, D.C., club “9:30″ on the afternoon of Nov. 23, 2007, when Eron Bucciarelli, drummer for the post-hard-core band Hawthorne Heights, tried to wake guitarist Casey Calvert.

Like most of the musicians living on the bus, Calvert rarely crawled out of bed before 3 p.m. Playing late shows and occasionally hanging out until the sun started to rise often turned mornings into late afternoons.

“Dude, get up!” Bucciarelli repeated. When he got no response his concerns grew. Pulling the curtain back from his friend’s bunk, panic set in when he noticed Calvert lying eerily still. He shook his friend and slapped the guitarist’s face.

Before long the other members of Hawthorne Heights joined Bucciarelli in a fruitless effort to wake Calvert.

Just 24 hours earlier, Calvert, 26, stood at the edge of a bowling lane, intimidated by the long wooden path before him. His fingers, which naturally pressed against guitar strings, felt completely foreign inside a bowling ball. His body, which easily jumped and thrashed around onstage, seemed physically incapable of finding the pocket when throwing a bowling ball.

Steady, he thought. No, no no! Thud.

And with that gutter ball Calvert confirmed his own suspicions that he sucked at bowling. What’s worse, the six Hawthorne Heights fans who won the chance to play against him and his band mates knew it, too.

The band’s young fans stifled their giggles. Hawthorne Heights was the object of more than a few teenage girls’ affections. The band, described by Spin Magazine as post-hard-core, emo-pop, hit it big in 2004 with their debut album “In the Silence of Black and White” and rock radio hit “Ohio is for Lovers.” Since then, their shows were attended by fans who had kept tabs on the band since the first album, as well as young admirers who had more recently jumped on the bandwagon.

Disappointed, Calvert sauntered out of the bowling alley, his shoulders relaxed in a slump. As usual, his light brown mop of perpetually messy hair had grown out, falling thick down to the nape of his neck and just above his eyebrows, shading two tired, deeply set blue eyes. He also sported a dusting of facial hair, confirming any suspicion that grooming was not a top priority for this guy.

Looking like an average, nondescript teenager for the first 19 years of his life, Calvert’s appearance had changed since Hawthorne Heights formed six years ago. Today, his arms, chest and feet had become a canvas for various tattoo artists, featuring depictions of Dr. Seuss characters, Jack the Pumpkin King and Kidrobot. A hoop piercing distinguished the noticeably pudgy nose that occasionally held up Calvert’s pair of black, rectangular rimmed glasses, and two large, gauged earrings had created small, gaping holes in his earlobes. A final facial piercing could be found on the right side of his lower lip.

Outside Calvert discovered that his friends and tour mates in the band Amber Pacific had arrived. The bands had spent months on the road together since the summer and planned to share a bus for the next six weeks.

“Hey man, how’s it going?” Amber Pacific’s bassist Greg Strong asked.

Calvert laughed, his round lips forming a narrow, goofy grin that resembled a ventriloquist dummy’s. “Awesome! I just bowled a 21.”

Calvert and Strong became friends that summer on Warped Tour after discovering that they shared a common obsession with shopping, specifically shopping for Paul Frank merchandise. Strong was particularly jealous of Calvert’s Julius the Monkey suitcase and Calvert was envious of Strong’s Paul Frank messenger bag.

On their last tour the pair made a pact to visit every Paul Frank store in the country while they were on the road. Their last stop was in Chicago. When they started shopping Calvert grabbed more than a dozen items, but eventually put most of them back, to avoid making his wife mad, he said. Later they swung by American Apparel, another one of the Calvert’s favorites stores.

The guitarist picked out a T-shirt that was divided in half diagonally across the body, red on one side and black on the other. It looked like a Chicago Bulls jersey gone terribly wrong.

“What do you think?” Calvert asked.

Strong looked at the shirt disapprovingly. “You’re the one who has to wear it.”

Calvert paused for a moment. “I’m gonna get it,” he said in a recognizably slow, slurred voice. He would wear that shirt for every one of their shows after that … and never washed it.

Today was no exception. Inside the Majestic Theatre in Detroit for a photo shoot, he sported the same T-shirt covered by the same Kid Robot sweatshirt he was almost always caught wearing. As they finished up, members of another band on the tour, the A.K.A.s, strolled into the venue.

“Hey guys, we’ve canceled the rest of the tour so you can head home,” Calvert joked.

The A.K.A.s lead singer, Mike Ski, shook his head at his friend. Although they laughed together today, their friendship had developed under less comical circumstances.

In the fall of 2006 Hawthorne Heights was on the road with their label mates Bayside, Aiden and Silverstein for Victory Records’ “Never Sleep Again” tour. Ski was invited out to tattoo the musicians between shows. One night, while driving just outside Cheyenne, Wyo., Bayside’s van hit a patch of ice and crashed, killing drummer John “Beatz” Holohan.

The experience created a close bond between all four Victory bands. In the weeks that followed, Calvert and the other members of Hawthorne Heights each had the Bayside logo with the nickname Beatz tattooed on themselves, many by Ski. It would not be the last memorial tattoo the artist would design, or the last time Bayside and Hawthorne Heights would come together under tragic circumstances.

By 5 p.m., Calvert still had a few hours to kill before the show and spent them double checking his bass gear on stage and hanging out with his band mates at the restaurant next-door. Although he followed his friends there, Calvert, a vegetarian and PETA member, usually cooked his own food on the bus. His favorite meal included a grilled cheese sandwich with Dr. Pepper to wash it down. Afterward he often treated himself to a pack of gummy bears, from the case he bought before the tour.

As members of the A.K.A.s drifted into the Mexican eatery, Calvert turned to the group, all decked out in nothing but black clothes.

“Hey, do you guys know where I can get some black?”

Back at the venue, the show was shaping up to be almost as pathetic as Calvert’s bowling game earlier. The floor, which held 1,000, was a little too clear with just 300 adolescents scattered across it. To make matters worse, Hawthorne Heights’ lead singer, JT Woodruff, was sick with a bad cold and barely able to speak, let alone sing. Calvert’s jaw was still sore from the root canal he’d had two days before, although the Vicodin he’d been prescribed took the edge off his pain.

No matter what personal issues they were dealing with, Hawthorne Heights wouldn’t cancel the show. Their last tour, headlined by pop-punk band Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, had ended prematurely when promoters didn’t make the profits anticipated. Calvert and his band mates couldn’t wait to get back on stage.

Although many headlining artists would rather hang out backstage than watch their opening acts, Calvert watched both the A.K.A.s and Amber Pacific that night.

He had never seen the A.K.A.s before, and he made a point to compliment Ski on their set.

It was not the first time that Calvert had watched Amber Pacific’s set. He liked to make the guys laugh by screaming at them and making faces from the side of the stage. If nothing else, watching Amber Pacific’s set always provide him with material to hassle the guys later that night on the bus.

The summer before, while the bands were on the Warped Tour together, Hawthorne Heights noticed Amber Pacific’s new guitarist Rick Hansen make a handful of mistakes in one song. From that point on, the guys referred to any mistake as “a Rick.”

When Hawthorne Heights took the stage at 9:30 p.m., the crowd had not gotten much larger and Woodruff ‘s voice was not any better. But that wasn’t going to stop Calvert from having a good time.

The second the music started, the guitarist was running around the stage like a 5-year-old on a sugar high. Calvert jumped in the air, threw his guitar around and performed kung-fu moves on a sheer scrim in front of the band’s backdrop.

The crowd did not reciprocate his enthusiasm, but Calvert knew how to handle that.

“I’m going to kill you!” He screamed at them. Fourteen-year-old emo fans looked back with surprise, but the ecstatic grin that followed Calvert’s threat set them at ease.

He had fun with the other members of Hawthorne Heights, too. Throughout the set Casey and bassist Matt Ridenour would throw picks at each other’s sweaty faces, trying to get them to stick, and even spit on one another. Like all of the other band members, the two had become more like brothers than friends after four years touring together.

When Woodruff ‘s voice couldn’t sing another note the band invited Matt Young, lead singer for Amber Pacific, onstage to help out. Having been on tour together for a month, Hawthorne Heights was sure Young would deliver. They were very wrong.

As the vocalist fumbled over lyrics and performed an off pitch version of “Ohio is for Lovers” Calvert could not contain himself. He turned away from the crowd so they didn’t catch him laughing, only to glance across the stage and notice Ridenour cracking up himself.

“Well that wasn’t any better,” Bucciarelli shouted from behind his drum kit.

Hawthorne Heights ended with their song “Where Can I Stab Myself In The Ears.” Handing his guitar to Hansen, Calvert grabbed a mike and delivered the desperate screams that defined the band’s sound.

Trying to swing his mike around by the chord, he accidentally let it hit the ground with an obtrusive “crack!” Later he tried to slide through Ridenour’s legs, but failed at that, too. Even on nights like tonight, when everything seemed to go wrong, Calvert’s childish grin was never absent from his face for long.

After they finished their set around 11 p.m., fans began drifting out of the club while Calvert packed up his gear.

He turned to Strong. “That was the shittiest show we’ve ever played.” But the joyful look on his face would make you think it had been their best.

Despite his frustrations with the crowd that night, Calvert had a close relationship with his fans. Like he did every night, the guitarist took a moment to say hello to several fans, posing for pictures and signing autographs.

When he finally made his way onto the bus around midnight, Calvert found all 12 of his bus mates hanging out in the front together. Usually this would be the time that Calvert retreated to his bunk to read or play the game “Leopard” on his computer. The guys would get on his case urging him to “come hang out.”

“I am hanging out,” Calvert always responded, and went right back to his book.

But that night he was in a more social mood and joined his friends, right after he took his medication.

Vicodin was already circulating through the guitarist’s system to ease his aching mouth, but that wasn’t the only pain Calvert felt. Contrasting his usually joyful, light-hearted personality, the guitarist had dealt with depression for years. He was unashamed and honest about his struggle, and tried to help others by promoting a nonprofit organization To Write Love On Her Arms.

But Calvert was still searching for a solution to his internal turmoil, visiting different doctors and trying different medications. Finally, he seemed to be doing better on the latest antidepressant he was prescribed, which he took that night.

None of the medications were washed down with alcohol or accompanied by illegal drugs. Although Young enjoyed a Pabst that night, the members of Hawthorne Heights and Amber Pacific rarely drank. Police would search the bus for drugs the next day, but found nothing.

Lastly Calvert took a sleeping medication called Ambien. The anti-anxiety drug had not helped him the night before, but he figured he’d give it one more shot, he announced to his buddies when he joined them in the lounge.

The guitarist was usually good for a laugh, but Calvert on sleeping pills was a riot. As the group of friends laughed and teased each other he sporadically belted out the theme song from “Aladdin,” struggling to remember the words.

“One hundred bad guys with swords!” he sang out repeatedly.

When Ski came aboard to say goodbye before they started driving to Washington, D.C., Calvert grabbed him. He had a new idea for a tattoo that he urgently needed to share.

“I’m going to get Waldo from “Where’s Waldo” in a hidden spot on me,” he laughed.

By 3 a.m., the comrades noticed that Calvert’s glazed eyes looked even sleepier than they had hours earlier. They told their friend it was time to hit the sack. Calvert appeared to follow orders as he walked into the back of the bus but was later found sitting up in the back lounge, staring into space. A mess of items he’d pulled out a drawer, but was physically unable to organize, were scattered across the table in front of him.

Strong hassled the guitarist to go to sleep as he cleaned up the clutter and Calvert finally crawled into his top bunk.

“Matt?” he called to Ridenour, laying in the bunk across from his.

“Yeah?”

“Good night.”

Ridenour paused. It was the first time Calvert had said this to him in their four years touring together.

“Good night, man.”

It was 2:30 in the afternoon the next day when they found him.

Members of each band had begun to emerge from their bunks when Bucciarelli tried to wake Calvert. When he found his friend unconscious, Bucciarelli called the tour manager, Brad Torkelson, for help. The two of them ran out of the bus and into the venue, shouting for someone to call 911.

Finding Calvert in an awkward position, the other members of Hawthorne Heights tried to move him, but were terrified to find their guitarist had grown rigid, his face still and purple.

The paramedics arrived in just under five minutes and rushed through the bus to Calvert’s bunk.

Finally, a paramedic stepped out with an EKG scanner in his hand. Strong’s eye caught the flat line and his heart sank.

“He’s in God’s hands now,” the paramedic told them.

This narrative was written through interviews with nine different people who knew Casey or were present during the last 24 hours of his life. Unfortunately, the members of Hawthorne Heights were unable to contribute to the piece.